Today I'm having a delivery of
brew-kit! That is, I have two orders turning up at my house today while I'm at
work. Fingers crossed the drivers can find a kind neighbour to hold onto them
for me till I get home. I hate having to arrange re-delivery or go to some
trading estate to pick it up.
I've ordered two new fermenting bins
and all the ingredients for my next two brews. My last brew was right before
new year and since then I've just been willing it to finish fermenting so I can
free up my fermenter for the next one. Solution: buy another fermenter!
 |
| Hurry up, damn you! |
I'll be making the other bin into a
dedicated hot liquor tank (HLT). This should make brew days a bit simpler, not
having to run wort into a spare bin and then transferring it to the boiler. I
also quite fancy trying first wort hops in a brew soon, so with the extra HLT
I'll be able to run the wort directly onto the hops in the boiler, while sparging
from the HLT.
At Christmas I got a load of brewing
books and reading them just makes me want to get my brew on. With the two
fermenters I'll be able to try out recipes twice a fast! So the first one is
going to be a belgian tripel, based on Jamil's recipe from Brewing Classic
Styles. Sounds like a good introduction to brewing a strong belgian beer,
before I try any step-mash jiggery pokery. It also has sugar addition, which
should be interesting to try.
The brew after that is going to be a
re-brew of my first beer, with a couple of changes. I'll be using Crystal
60(ebc) instead of Crystal 120(ebc) to make it a bit lighter in colour. It
should also remove the bit of liquorice flavour in batch #1. I'm also going to
mash it at a slightly lower temperature, 1 or 2 degrees, to help it attenuate
better. Batch #1 has stacks of body, so I think it will cope with thinning out
a bit, and the lower temp should produce less complex sugars for the yeast to
break down. I essentially want to see what difference the changes make, to help
me understand the ingredients and process a bit more. But also to check
that my first brew wasn't just a fluke!
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