The Home Brew Site

Here is it my first attempt at a extract brew. I reckon it’s working pretty well. I started it yesterday. I’ve kept it fairly simple and used the ingredients that I have to hand. It’s a dry run as it were before I have a go at making one of the clone ales.

It starts with steeping 200grms of crystal malt in 3 l of water (I’m only making 2 gallons of beer in total as I don’t have a bigger pan yet) I heated the water to 65C then using a muslin bag to contain the grains dropped them in and let them sit for 20 mins.

I removed the grains and brought the water to the boil, once boiling I pulled the pan off the heat and added the 1.5kg of Pale liquid malt extract. It’s important to remove the pan from the heat whilst the extract dissolves other wise is burns the extract which is not a good thing. Return the pan to the heat and add 1.5 oz of goldings hops, again in a muslin bag to save straining later, the wort is then kept at a rolling boil for 45mins. The final stage is to add 0.5 oz of Fuggles hops for the last 15mins.

The pan is removed from the heat, and left to cool for 15mins before adding to the brew bin and topping up with cold water to 10l or 2gallons(UK). I used Gervin English Ale yeast.

So far so good the beer has started fermenting and exploded all over, my fault I over filled the ferementer. It does smell nice even though it’s not beer yet. It’s got a sort of coppery colour, so hopefully it won’t be poisonous when done.

Here is the latest addition to the beer squadron. This one I call the ‘Hurricane ale’ this is a dark amber ale, it also marks my first experiment using crystal malt. Here is the recipe. (more…)

The Mosquito was a formidable light twin engine bomber that was the fastest aircraft going during WWII, it was of course British, capable of fast precision bombing and was near invunerable from attack by any other plane, it simply outran them.

What has this got to do with beer you ask, well this is the first in a series of beers that are named after aircraft, commercially there is the Spitfire a real ale from Kent, well now there is the Mosquito Bomber a pale ale from yorkshire. Following on from this there will be a Hurricane and a Lancastor bomber. The lanc’ will also make a fine winter ale, as it’ll be dark with a hint of something, I haven’t decided what yet.

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Framboos is a Belgium beer made with Raspberries ?!?!

I’ve not tried any beer before that has been made with fruit so this is a bit of an experiment. I bought it at my local Home Brew shop, the guy suggested that you use a real candy sugar. Candy sugar is looks just like a bag of sweats of candy only clear, bit like a boiled sweat without all the flavours and colours. It’s a little strange when you are stirring the wort and it rattles like a bag of gravel.

It brewed out within about 5 days, mainly because the instructions say maintain the temp at 25C. I tried a little sip when it came out of the barrel, it was quite a refreshing beer. We shall see when it has primed and ready to drink.

[tags]homemade beer, beer review, homebrew beer [/tags]

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