By Posted on Posted in All Grain, Beer, Recipes 2 Comments

I brewed this one across the May Day bank holiday weekend and have been very pleased with the result.  The guys have also given me some good feedback on it too, which is always nice.

The plan was to brew an English Bitter, using Jester hops.  I hadn’t brewed many traditional English styles before, so it was nice to brew something new to the repertoire.  I did a bit of reading up at some existing recipes to see what sort of grain bill I would need and was pleased to see that most use a fairly simple one, so I built on based on what I already had in and what I wanted out of the end product.

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By Posted on Posted in All Grain, Beer, Recipes 4 Comments

I made this a few months back as a golden ale for the summer, it was a development of the Olicana recipe I did previously but with a couple of classic English hops thrown in and a slight tweak to the grain bill to add a touch more colour and depth. I also used it as a test recipe for Mangrove Jacks Liberty Bell yeast which performed very well and really helped to bring out the fruity notes in this brew.

Blending the lager and pale malt seems to work really well for keeping the beer light and crisp, I wanted a deeper golden colour than on the previous brew but without excess sweetness from caramel grains so I added a little pale chocolate malt for colour adjustment and to hopefully add some subtle depth to the grist. Hopping was classic English combinations in the boil with Target to bitter and EKG and Challenger for late additions, I decided to dry hop with Olicana to add some extra fruity aromas on the nose.

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By Posted on Posted in Uncategorised No Comments

This was another experimental brew that I did using the 30/30 method. It is still conditioning so not sure how it will turn out but taste tests at bottling were looking good (although I don’t think I would use dark crystal again, I had to sub this in as I didn’t have any 60-80L). Apparently you aren’t supposed to use big fruity hops in steam beers but hey rules are there to be broken right! Northern Brewer is the standard hop for this but I didn’t have any and Northdown is related apparently.

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By Posted on Posted in All Grain, Beer, Recipes No Comments

After jonesing for a brew day for a while, (I look after my little boy a lot of the time as the wife works 12 hour shifts, I dont get to do them often) I managed to have a brew morning yesterday, and after some careful deliberation with my brewing brother HisDudeness, I decided to push the malt envelope (for me anyways) and see if I could deal with the thin body issues Ive been having with recent beers…

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