Ok, thought I'd give everyone an update, 1 hour in,

Rain caused a few panicky moments but has held off so far, ingredients measured out, strike water at temp and mash started.

Videoing as I'm going feels weird and has definitely slowed me down a little.

Have 90 mins now to clear up, monitor mash temp (adjust as needed) and have lunch.

More later

All done,

Brew went well, no real probs, wort is in the fermentor cooling down in a ice bath, once at pitching temp will take OG reading and relax with a beer.

Clean up is already done and the missus is is happy. A good day

Will post a link to the video once I have cleaned it up a little

Well done Yettiman

Look forward to seeing the video.

Yeasty - I use Sean Terrill as well.
The last few times I have got the coopers Ox-bar bottles from Ebay (I think it was £12 delivered for 24).

Glad to hear you had a good brewday Yettiman, and kept the other half happy.

My OG came in at 1.044, pitched the yeast yesterday and the fermentation is well under way.

I am going to attempt the temperature increases as indicated in the file. I don't know how this will contribute to the final beer but I'll give it a go!

Now we start the waiting game....

Job done guys

Wish you all a safe and hassle free fermentation.

I usually keg 19L and bottle the rest, I may bottle all of this one so that I can see the effect time has on the beer, wish I hadn't gone for the full 25L brew length now

To paraphrase Jaws. "Your gonna need a bigger bottler!"

I have just started getting into mini-kegging so may split this between keg & bottle (it sure beats bottling 25 litres anyhow)!

I think I am at about 18 hours "post-pitching" and it is over 50% attenuated already!
At this rate I will be packaging tomorrow & drinking it on Friday

I think I may have found a new favourite ale yeast

You guys are starting to scare me, too many beer gurus on this thread. Please be gentle with your criticisms.

One day in on the fermentation, and all is looking good

Not pitched yet and still in the cube. The APA is not even close to finishing I'm gonna take a sample tomos and see how far its got to go. I might move it into the house as the weather is still mild enough, got to prep some slants as well

Yettiman wrote:You guys are starting to scare me, too many beer gurus on this thread. Please be gentle with your criticisms.

Very funny Yettiman!
A novice can easily brew a better beer than a guru. Just because they may have had a little more "exposure" to brewing, doesn't necessarily mean they will be better.

Regarding the taste testing; I welcome constructive criticism, you guys may like or dislike something in the beer that I don't. That's what makes it really interesting.

How's the video coming along by the way?

One other thing - what yeast has everybody chosen?
Mally - St. Austell
Yeasty - WLP023
Yettiman - ?
Adman - ?

I've either been very clever and given a recognisable base level or very unadventurous due to lack of yeast experience. I used Safale S-04.

I confess that although I have ploughed my way through the yeast book, I am still very much a novice in this area.

The Video is coming slowly, have it over to the Mac and into iMovie but not really started on it
Need to re-record some of the sound due to wind noise, but I can do that easy enough, just need time.

And it is official, I hate the sound of my own voice


One other thing - what yeast has everybody chosen?
Mally - St. Austell
Yeasty - WLP023
Yettiman - Nottingham :( Sorry, It was what I had)
Adman - ?[/quote]

Pet Bottles ordered - eBay as Tescos are out of stock

Mally - St. Austell
Yeasty - WLP023
Yettiman - Nottingham
Adman - S04

This is fantastic; Assuming all ingredients are identical and the process was the same (all unlikely I guess)!
The only (major) differences will be yeast choice (and fermentation).

Mine is at 1.014 now.

Guys good luck with this. Brewlabs posted me a slant of what they said was a suitable yeast for a hobgoblin clone for about a fiver if I remember correctly(to Ireland). I heard they're rumoured to have the original yeast, might be worth a try

Sent from my XT890 using Tapatalk

Thanks Lars, much appreciated

This is proving to be a lot of fun

How's everybody getting along?

Mine is all packaged up now, carbing & conditioning.

My brew is still fermenting and the krausen is still floating on top! I can't get my hydrometer in to test it and I don't want to fuss with it too much and risk infection.

Usually I would just leave it for another week to finish off in its own time. What do you guys think? Should I force the issue or leave it to see what happens?

If in doubt wait imo

Sent from my XT890 using Tapatalk

Adman1966 wrote:My brew is still fermenting and the krausen is still floating on top! I can't get my hydrometer in to test it and I don't want to fuss with it too much and risk infection.

Usually I would just leave it for another week to finish off in its own time. What do you guys think? Should I force the issue or leave it to see what happens?

Leave it, I don't even bother taking a hydro until its cleared.

Mine is not so good I pitched a full vial of WLP023 yesterday at 12:00 and there was not much happening at 10:00 this morning. I didn't follow my usual routine probably because I tried to be extra careful with this special project. I usually leave my cubes out in the shed but as I was waiting for the brew fridge and it was looking likely to be a weeks wait I put the cube into my spare fridge which was empty. Hence I had a cube of chilled wort by this weekend. I left it out of the fridge on Friday night and on Saturday I evicted my APA and freed up the fridge. I then transferred the HG to a new FV and gave it a good beating with my mash paddle in a battery drill to oxygenate. I then put it into the brew fridge to warm up to pitching temperature along with the vial of yeast. It hadn't warmed up to 20c by 8 o'clock that evening and as I was going out I left it till Sunday to pitch. I'm thinking that with the time gap and the temp increase I may have lost some of the introduced oxygen Anyway I have just given it another go with the battery drill and mash paddle to see if that kicks it off.

FFS I'm fretting like a newbie I was hoping it would go off like a rocket as I don't want to be much more than a week behind the rest of you when it comes to conditioning times perhaps I should stop worrying and take a big dose of "Bob" chill out and have a beer for breakfast



Yeasty

It does seem that we have been smitten with a case of "newbie panic" and forgotten the training received from Bob. This being "Relax, you will still make beer!"

Too true Adman, I guess it is because of the tasting.

I normally just get a recipe, sort of follow it (depending upon ingredients ) make lots of notes, not really know east they mean, miss the FG, and make reasonable / good (to me) beer.

But this has had me a little twitchy, I must admit.

My FG is now sitting at 1.013 so quite close, will give it another week, then might bottle.

I like (I might have said this before) to leave it about 3 weeks to bulk condition in the fermentor.

Then I guess, I will start pestering for addresses to send the bottles out

Speak soon

Well that's my decision made, it stays put until it's ready. As a certain advertiser informed us, Good things come to those who wait!

And she's off looks 100% better that yesterday, nice krausen this morning

Read up on WLP023 last night and it seems that it can be a slow starter and the positive activity this morning has cheered me up..

Time for work

Catch ya later

Yeasty

All finished,

No movement on the FG for a couple of days now. Has finalised out at 1.0115

Best guess, seems to be halve way between 1.012 and 1.011

Planning to leave it another week, to clear a bit, then bottle week Sunday

How's it going for everyone else?

Just 4 days in for me and the krausen is starting to collapse so I reckon it will be almost done after the weekend but will leave it till at least the next weekend before crashing. Got to get some bottles sorted. Made some slants tonight and might top crop tomos if I have the time. If I'm too late for that I'll just wash the sediment and save some of that.

Mally: do the coopers PET bottles come sterilised ? I'm assuming I will at least have to rinse them out with starsan.

Anybody looked into postage costs ? Its gonna be at least a Kg for 2 bottles. I've got an account with transglobal so will look into it over the weekend.



Yeasty