I’ve waited patiently for 2 weeks since bottling. Saturday came around and I had already decided that I was going to open a bottle of the latest brew and see what it tastes like.
So I picked a bottle off the shelf, got myself a glass and the bottle opener – applied opener to bottle cap – tsssch! A nice hiss of escaping CO2, a good sign. Tilt glass – pour beer slowly down the side. Colour is a dark brown, a sort of chestnut colour, darker than I’d hoped but I’m not fussy about that. Head is minimal but again I don’t care, I’ll just make sure to add more sugar at bottling time, next time.
I take a sniff, nice! Faint hop aroma with a nice, round real ale smell. Excellent!
I take a sip, and then another. This is good! Some initial bitterness gives way to a solid middle which I can simply describe as “beer”. Yum! The piece de resistance is the after taste though. It’s smooth, with a heavenly caramel flavour, which I guess comes from the crystal malt.
Finished the first bottle (with a little help from my g/f) and then opened another, which we shared again.
The beer is really tasty and warming and definitely as strong (alcohol-wise) as a I calculated previously.
I’m really pleased! This is my best beer yet.
Cheers!!! 
The fermentation happened really quickly for this one. After brewing on Monday I watched the wort grow a big, foamy head all day Tuesday and the airlock then started bubbling on Tuesday evening. This continued all day Wednesday but was dying down by Thursday morning. The quick fermentation is expected for several reasons, namely the fact that this is only a 1 gallon batch and the yeast I have used (Safale S-04) is particularly quick.
I bottled yesterday (Saturday) and managed to get 7 pints (bottles) out of the 8 pint/1 gallon fermentor. They were primed with about half a teaspoon of Young’s Body Brew (Malto-dextrin). I’ll leave them for about 2 weeks to condition and do their secondary fermentation thing.
The last 100 ml of beer from the fermentor was poured into a testing tube and I measured the Specific Gravity to be about 1.012. The original gravity before fermentation was about 1.055. These numbers combine to give the beer an alcohol by volume (ABV) figure of 5.6%! This is within the target for the recipe and ingredients I used so I am really pleased with this!
Now I’ve just got to wait 2 weeks-ish to sample… 
I finally got my order from Easybrew last Friday after a long delay (see previous posts). Easybrew apparently “mislaid” my order although it’s all sorted now and they have refunded the postage costs, so no hard feelings.
The brewing was done last night using the following recipe:
- 1 lb Dry Amber Malt Extract
- 1 lb Crushed Crystal Malt
- East Kent Goldings Hops
- Safale S-04 Yeast
Here’s a picture of the ingredients:
The Crystal malt was placed into a straining bag and put into the brew pot along with approx. 1 gallon of water. The grains were steeped while the water was brought to the boil, at which point the”giant tea bag” was removed (see picture below).
The Amber DME was then added and the timer on the boil set for 1 hour (in my head!). The hot break was really noticable which was interesting! After 30 mins I added half an ounce of East Kent Goldings Hops and then another half ounce with 15 minutes to go. Here’s a picture of the hops.
When the boil was done it was cooled as quickly as possible by sitting the brew pot in the kitchen sink, which was full of cold water. The wort was then syphoned into the fermentor and topped up with fresh boiled water to 8 pints (1 uk gallon). When the temperature of the wort was low enough (below 25 degrees C), the yeast was added to the fermentor and the airlock was attached (at approx 11pm). The fermentor is shown below as it is this morning.
Since this picture was taken (about 90 minutes ago) there has been noticable development of foam and bubbles on the surface of the wort. Go Yeast!
Check back soon for developments…
