Brew 0902

One week on ... the fermenting slowed a bit in the middle of the week - it was cold, cold enough that even the heating pad couldn't quite keep the beer above 18 degrees.  It wasn't really a failing of the room as such - everywhere was cold, we had a cold snap.  However, the properly insulated, low ceiling-ed nature of the bar meant that I only had to pop a heater in there for a little while to bring the temperature back up and get things bubbling again.

At the one week mark the fermentation had slowed to almost nothing.  So, time for some hops.

50g of Kohatu dry hops into the mix.... mmm, smells yummy (both the beer AND the hops)

Now to leave it to soak in for another week or so.

Brew 00901 - Pilsner

This was an attempt to recreate the mighty success of the Pilsner I brewed in late 2013.  It turned out great.  In fact so much so that on the occasion of my birthday in January of 2014, our guests discovered it and demolished the lot.

Unfortunately, due to extreme slackness I never blogged about that one when I made it and so I have had to do this from memory.

So - Brewday:

2x cans of Black Rock Pilnser malt extract

1kg of Brew Enhancer

20L of Aquifer water

I couldn't remember if we had added any hops on brewday last time - we have done that sometimes (added a small amount of dry hops) but I really wasn't sure if we did so I left it out.

All fairly usual at this point with the only exception being that I didn't reduce the amount of Brew Enhancer to balance out the fact that I was using extra malt extract.  Common wisdom usually says if you use two cans of malt then reduce the sugar (or Enhancer) from 1kg to about 750g.  However I clearly remember failing to do that last time.  Probably because I dumped the whole bag in and then had an "oh crap" moment about it.  But since this time was about trying to recreate the success of last time I made the conscious decision to use the whole bag again.

This time for the first time I did all the prep work upstairs in the kitchen and then moved everything downstairs into the bar before adding the cold water to the fermenter.  This means the beer can brew away down there without cluttering the kitchen.  Also the temperature should be more stable down there than in the kitchen.

OG 1060