Beers

Our first beer.

Based on the Brew School beer. It's a basic English IPA, mostly Maris with some Crystal and torrified wheat and bittered with Hersbrucker and Golding. Fermented with S-05.

Until a few beers down the line our gravity unit calcuations were out. Also the Maris was a bit old. We didn't get a particularly good result - the ABV was only about 2%.

The first beer we made from our own recipe. Mostly Maris with Crystal, Biscuit and Wheat malts plus torrified Wheat and flaked Rice. Bittered with Saaz and Syrian Golding. Fermented with S05.

Came out pretty decently.

Made from the rest of Cornelis' donated malt, so another random recipe. Mostly Maris with Special B and Aromatic malts plus torrified Wheat. Bittered with Styrian Golding and Herbrucker. Fermented with S04.

Summer lightning clone that went all chlorophenol. Pure Maris bittered with Challenger and Golding, fermented with British Ale II 1335. Must have been some chlorine or chloramine in the water because it tasted pretty awful... and still does.

A basic English Mild from the Graham Wheeler book. Mostly Maris with Crystal and Black malts plus one torrified Wheat. Fermented with London ESB. Bittered with Challenger and dry hopped with Golding. Noteably this was our first attempt at water treatment. Mike had been writing some software to automatically work out the water treatment regime and put it to use.

It came out pretty well really considering we were still new to the whole thing.

Another Wheeler recipe, another chlorophenol ruined beer. Mostly Maris with some Crystal and Black malts. Bittered with Fuggle, dry hopped with Golding, fermented with British Ale #1 GY011.

A decent brown ale with a complex malt bill: Maris, Crystal (Light, Medium, Dark), Chocolate and Black. Bittered with Fuggles and Golding, fermented with London ESB.

Maris, Crystal and Munich. Bittered with Fuggles and Goldings. Dry hopped with Goldings and fermented with M44 West Coast IPA. Burtonised water.

Free Cluster hops through the Home Brew Group led to a Cluster single-hop challenge. Maris, Crystal, Sugar and Chocolate malts. Three lots of Cluster as bittering plus a dry hopping with Cluster. Basically a copy of BX6/Wadsworth 6X with Cluster.

Pen wanted something much more hoppy, using our 431. Maris, a fair bit of Munich, torrified Wheat and Crystal. Simcoe to bitter and 431 to dry hop - lots of it. BRY 97 to ferment. One of our best to date.

Our first wheat beer. Pilsner, Wheat, Munich, Chocolate and CaraPils. Golding and Hersbrucker for bittering. Fermented with the wrong yeast: Munich Wheat Beer instead of Munich Classic Wheat Beer (complaint registered with Lallemand for the poor naming choice). Final beer was split in half and one part had a selection of spices added. The inappropriate yeast meant that it didn't really taste like a wheat beer unfortunately.

A clone of Brewfist's Caterpillar. Maris, Rye, Wheat and Pale Crystal. Bittered with Target, Mokueka and Cluster. Dry hopped with the same. Fermented with Nottingham. Came out pretty well.

A test bed for Special Realaletionship. Based on Magnum Blonde, it's Maris with Magnum for bittering and fermented with S04. Then it was split five ways, dry hopped and the best and cheapest hop chosen for the next challenge.

A very simple beer: Maris with Magnum for bittering and Cascade for dry hopping. Fermented with S04. Pen loves it. Designed to be a cheap beer to produce, for a challenge that never quite came off. Will form the basis for a lot of experimentation.

The 'Will it brew challenge' presented us with Grits. The base beer was Carlotta Saison - Maris, Grits, Pilsner, Wheat and Oat Hulls. Bittered with Saaz and Kent Golding. Fermented with WLP566 Belgian Saison II. Unfortunately the 'Quick Grits' should have meant no pre-boiling neccessary unfortunately they failed to convert in the mash so we had to add sugar to make up for it. Lead to a cidery taste. Maturing fairly well though.

The Manchester Home Brew Group's single hop challenge for this year. The chosen hop was Styrian Wolf. We also added some of the Manchester Bee Keeper's honey we were using for the mead. Unfortunately the hop was a bit oily, and this may have combined with the honey to make something that could taste a bit buttery. The bottles are a bit of a lottery - some buttery, some not.

A clone of  Pen's favourite mild. Maris, Chocolate, Crystal and Roasted Barley. Bittered with Fuggle, First Gold and Goldings. Fermented with Notthingham.

Our highest strength so far - 10%. A recipe from Aaron in the Home Brew Group. It impressed Pen and we've been wanting to do it for over a year. Maris, Roasted Barley, Chocolate, Pale Crystal, Special B, Oat Hulls, Oak flakes. Bittered with Cluster, Fuggle and Target. Fermented with S04. Black  gold!

Our attempt at a beer for the Stockport Beer Festival 2019's home brew competition. It's BX17 with added Amber malt, uses slightly different hops and is fermented with London ESB yeast.

Technically this is no longer an Imperial Stout so we might have to rename it for Stockport Beer Festival 2019's home brew competition. It should be a Foreign Extra Stout but we'll only know for certain once it's ready. The recipe has changed from the BX18. We're using London ESB yeast rather than S04, dropped the hop levels considerably, altered the water treatment to make it much maltier and mashed it at a really high temperature. The idea is to keep the grain bill at 7-8% ABV levels but ferment it to about 6% (thus meeting the competition criteria). Thus, lots of flavour but not that strong.

It came third in the 2019 Stockport Home Brew Competition Porter/Stout category!

The Manchester Homebrew Group organised a Extract Challenge for March 2019. So we took an old (out of date) Simply Pale Ale kit and brewed it strong (half the volume, but without extra sugar) and hopped it heavily. It wasn't too well received but Pen seems to enjoy drinking it from the keg.

We've had another attempt at producing a light and hoppy beer for Pen to drink as a session beer. We went back to our Magnum Blonde recipe and made some simple modifications:

Added 15% Pale Rye Malt

Added 10% Torrified Wheat

Both of these were to add extra body and head, plus Pen rather likes the taste of Rye.

Then we added a bunch of fruity hops: 25g each of Citra, Wai-iti, HBC 431 and Nelson Sauvin after a few days of fermenting and let them sit for a few more days, with a little bit of stirring.

Shoved it in a corny keg with 26PSI, left it to carbonate and then sat it under our stairs.

This is actually version 3 of our Aaron's Imperial Stout (BX18 and BX20). We're still trying to push it to extremes. This time we raised the percentages of specialty malts and added to raisins to the conditioning. Still a hot mash, this time for 45 mins rather than 60 and a degree higher. The shorter mash would mean less efficiency and less attenuation. The high temperature would push the efficiency up and lower the attenuation more. A more liquid mash should just increase the efficiency.

London ESB took it from 1.074 to 1.040, which it a damned high FG but doesn't taste particularly sweet. Maybe the reasonable bitterness or the heavy malt bill hides it?

The name comes from Douglas Adams and describes something which is very, very black.

Our 2019 Will It Brew Challenge was to brew with Korean Crispy BBQ Seaweed thins. These are weird little wafer thin compressed seaweed with a BBQ flavouring. Some of it was dry hopped with hops, some with more thins. Only the base was vaguely drinkable.

Rich Caller's Flemish Red. It's spending 18 months hidden in the cellar waiting for the Brett to do its work.

Tipped away because of an infection.

Simple APA with GP75 for the dry hopped. 2g/L.

This is a clone of Coniston BlueBird, with a little help from their MD, Ian.

 

A basic German Lager - our first lager - with a little help from Reese at Donzoko.

A clone of Brass Castle's Hazelnut Mild based on the recipe sent to us by the Head Brewer Phil.

The second of the Flander's Reds were doing. Also going to age for 18 months.

A NEIPA using the process as explained by Tiny Rebel's Head Brewer. Our first NEIPA.

An attempt at cloning Erdinger Dunkel. It didn't work but produced a drinkable Mild.

An attempt at a clone of Hommelbier but without using ANY of the actual hops. Sort of worked.

A basic Farmhouse Saison recipe that turned out rather well.

Another attempt at Reece's recipe but with more hops. The original was better but this one went on tap.

A second attempt at our NEIPA but this time with LOTS more hops. Wasn't as good as the original but it went on tap.

Fourth attempt at a high taste, low strength stout. Lots more specialty grains. Came out nicely.

Third version of Rich's Flanders Red. Also due for 18 months of conditioning before blending with the other two.

A low (1.3%) ABV pale which was split 6 ways and each had a different style of single dry hop. This was based on BX1, which we found some examples of 4 years on and Pen thought was better than most of the LA beers on sale.

Just as it says. Maris and Fuggle. Lots of both.