ESB rack to secondary, Cider

Last night I racked the ESB to secondary.

Primary fermentation started off very vigourously, with the wort visbly churning around for a couple of days. The rate gradually tailed off, but bubbling was still > 1/minute until 10 days after starting.

I added the 0.25oz Kent Goldings hops (dry-hopping) as the beer was syphoning into the secondary.

The SG was 1016, so ABV is 4.8%, and AA is 69%, a little lower that I would have expected, but within reason for the style. The aroma is nicely hoppy-floral, which should be augmented somewhat by the dry-hopping. Taste is medium bitter, with no perceivable alcohol. Fairly long lasting bitter aftertaste. Overall its good!

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In attempt to reach back to my roots, I decided to experiment with making cider (hard). I did a bit of research, and came up with the following astonishingly simple recipe:

1 Gallon 100% Apple Juice (unfiltered, pastuerised)
1 sachet baker's yeast
0.5 cup of filtered water

The apple juice is Murray’s Pure Apple Juice, which conveniently comes in nice 1 gallon glass jugs. http://www.murraycider.com/products.html. This is probably the nearest I'll get to ideal, short of pressing apples myself. Traditionally, the juice would be non-pasteurised, and would ferment under its own natural yeast, but from what I can tell, non-pasteurised juice us hard (illegal?) to buy here. Anyway, I don't trust the wild yeast here, so controlled pitching is probably the way to go. As for the yeast, I've seen all of wine, champagne, cider, ale and bakers recommended, so I used bakers, as it is what I had to hand.

I hydrated the yeast in the 0.5 cup of water for 10 minutes or so.
I poured out about a pint of juice from the jug to allow for headspace. The OG was 1050. This juice is fairly sweet - nothing particularly complex here, but I think its good natural product for an initial experiment.
I shook the jug to aerate, then pitched the yeast. I sealed the jug with an airlock and stopper (which only just fit).

Next morning fermnetation had taken off - 13 bubbles/minute. There is a noticable sulphur smell (probably H2S). Hopefully this will subside.

It looks like I didn't need to worry about decanting as much as pint for headspace - there is not really any significany kraeusen. Oh well, better safe than sorry.

All things being equal, I'll probably leave this in primary for 2 weeks, rack to secondary for 3-4 weeks, then bottle.

ESB brew day

Last night, Corey and I brewed a Fuller's ESB clone. The recipe is:

5.5lb british extra light malt extract (powder)
0.5lb crystal (40 deg. L)
1.0lb flaked maize
0.25# dark Belgian candi sugar (275 deg. L)
1 oz Bullion pellets (8.5 AAU) 60 mins
1 oz Bullion pellets (8.5 AAU) 20 mins
1 oz Goldings flowers (4.5 AAU) 20 mins
0.75 oz Goldings flowers (4.5 AAU) 10 mins
0.25 oz goldings flowers dry-hopped in secondary
Wyeast 1968 London Ale

The yeast was a smack-pack, which I had started 2 days before. On brewday, the pack was fully inflated.

I recently bought a 5gall. cooler (cylinder style) and converted it to a mash tun. I tried to do this with minimal modification. A 1.5" length of 5/16"ID,7/16"OD vinyl tubing fit nicely into the inside of the existing tap on the cooler. Into the other end of the tube, I put a 3/8" brass T-connector, then on the other two ends of the T-connector, I attached a 20" stainless steel braided tube with cable ties. The braided tube was obtained from a faucet supply tube - the fittings on the ends cut off, and the plasitc tube inside removed.

We mashed the crystal malt and flaked maize in about a gallon of water at 154 degF for 70 minutes.

We recirculated the first runnings back into the tun, until the wort became clearer. The braided tubing did a good job of keeping solids out of the stream. We sparged wth another gallon. I put a plastic lid on the surface, which really helped stop the grain bed getting stirred up.

Once this wort was collected in the pot, the volume was made up to a bit over 5 gallons, and the malt extract and candi sugar added. Bringing the whole thing to the boil probably took over an hour. The boil lasted an hour, using the hop schedule above.

Boiling this much wort on one stove burner is not very efficient - I'm looking forward to using Mo's propane burner next time.

15 minutes before the end of the boil, I added the chiller coil, to sanitise it.

After boiling, the wort was chilled in 30-40 minutes. We aerated by pouring between the pot and a sanitised bucket a few times. I collected a sample, which had a 1052 or 1053 OG which is right on target for the recipe. I think the finished beer may well have a good head - the head on the sample had still not fully settled after I looked at it the next morning.

The finished wort was funnelled into the 6.5gal. carboy and the yeast pitched. The next morning slow bubbling was observed.

Guerro and Hefeweizen Bottling

Yesterday and Today, Mo and I bottled the Guerro and the Hefeweizen. We got about 50 12oz bottles of each. Mo made me promise not to try any of it until they get back from Australia in 4 weeks.