MikeGrice.com

As per recipe here, mash is nearly finished now. Pics at the end but I think this will be pretty straightforward, if I haven’t got it worked out by brew 15 I need my bumps felt.

AA% on the hops is a bit off too, but don’t care right now. So IBU will be down a bit…

25L Brew Length
Target OG: 1.065
Target FG: 1.017
Target ABV: 6.4%
Target IBU: 33.7
BU:GU Ratio: 0.52
Target Colour: 20.8SRM

Fermentables
5kg Maris Otter (70.4%)
1kg Medium Crystal (14.1%)
1kg Amber Malt (14.1%)
100g Chocolate Malt (1.4%)

Hops
50g Bramling Cross (6.0%AA) – 60 mins
25g Bramling Cross (6.0%AA) – 20 mins
25g Bramling Cross (6.0%AA) – 0 mins

Fermentation
2 Sachets SafAle S-04

Photos

And that’s that.  I missed my OG by 5 points and my brewlength by some way, but no biggie.  It’s fermenting away now and down to 1.017 as of yesterday, it tastes lovely already.  Can’t wait for this one.

As per the recipe here, here is the brewday!

It all went ok, except I forgot to put in the hop filter. Roll on my new brewery! The green hops smelled lovely. I got them from Heeley City Farm, they’re WGV – and while they’re a bit past their best (I’m lazy), they really filled the room with a lovely smell. I overboiled due to having a window guy come round, so had to liquor back, which is a first for me.

Recipe as before:

Heeley Green

A dark ale roughly moulded on GW’s Pedigree but messed around with like I do. Hopefully a nice warming ale for winter, and its liberally hopped with Organic WGV hops courtesy of Heeley City Farm (I picked the hops with my brother and his friend in the dark the other day!)

Brew Length: 25L

4kg Maris Otter
800g Amber Candi Sugar
100g Black Malt

290g Green Organic WGV @ 60m (equivalent to 58g): 35.1 IBU
95g Green Organic WGV @ 10m (equivalent to 19g): 4.2 IBU
125g Green Organic WGV @ 0m, 30m steep (equivalent to 25g)
125g Green Organic WGV @ 2d (dryhop, frozen for now) (equivalent to 25g)

Water treated using GWs calculator to be Burton-on-Trent Ale

90m boil
60m mash @ 67ºC
2 Sachets of Danstar Nottingham
Ferment for a week @ 20ºC
Dry hop at 36 hours

Estimated OG: 1.040
Estimated FG: 1.008
Estimated ABV: 5.0%
Actual OG: 1.046 (liquored back from 1.056 (but I way overboiled)

It’s a nice dark brown colour, a great autumn beer I hope.

Anyways, here are the photos!

Fresh candi sugar and the grain bill

Making a hop tea to compare bitterness

Doughed in at 66 (cooled down a bit after the shot)

Lots and lots of hops!  That’s the Bittering, Flavour, Aroma and Dry

That’s what was left from a full carrier bag!

Getting a boil on with a kitchen full of hops

Different additions and chilling down to pitching temps

Overboiled so came out too high, had to liquor back somewhat!

Spent hops

I’ve made a couple of hefeweisens before. They’re easy to make and even easier to drink. Due to the Malt Miller not having all my usual ingredients, I went and mixed it up a bit. This one will be darker, maltier and have some vanilla flavour. It needed to be ready by 01 October which kind of dictated when it needed to be done by – only a Hefe will be ready in that tight schedule!

Batch Size: 23L

Grain Bill

3kg Weyermann Dark Wheat
2kg Weyermann Premium Pilsener
500g Weyermann Carahell

Hops

30g Hallertauer Mittelfruh @ 4.2%AA

Other

4 Vanilla Pods scraped, chopped, and soaked in Jack Daniels (in primary due to lack of time!)

Yeast

WLP380 Hefeweisen IV: Ferment at 19C for a week

Packaging

Bottle and prime heavily… 3.8 vols

Importantly

Drink on the 1st of October!

Pictures

Numbers

Target OG: 1.053
Actual OG: 1.047

Target FG: 1.012
Expected Colour: 3.9 SRM – I think this will end up darker to be honest!
Expected IBU: 11.9 IBU
Expected ABV: 5.4% (I think this will end up a bit lower tbh due to this yeast)

I had a bad time. I was rushing to do the mash and while my thermometer read 66.7 I must have found a cool spot – after the end of the mash I measured 70C. So hopefully I have something fermentable! I ended up with 1.046 as my OG so I’m off by a bit, but that’s fine. I fancy a sweet one and its for a tapas evening, easy drinking.  I helped this along by caramelising a couple of litres of wort down on the gas cooker while the main boil happened…Let’s see!