Fruli Clone in the Secondary

So I racked the Fruli Clone today.
We added 200g of strawberry jam that was boiled with 100mL of water.
Once the jam/water concoction was cooled to 75F we added it to the secondary.
It's off to bottling next week!

Fruli Clone Update

So I started off the mash with 1 gallon heated to 145F and added the grains and let the whole thing sit for 30min at 135F. While that was happening I had another gallon of water getting up to a boil. I used that to add to the mash to keep bringing the temperature up. We did a 45min rest at 155F, then 5min at 167F.
The after-boil gravity was 1.038.

Grains post-boil

Wyeat 3944 Belgian Wit yeast

Bitter Orange Peel (left) Coriander Seed (right)

First 30min of the boil nothing was added

30min into the boil Cascade hops added

Yeast is pitched and the magic is about to begin

Fruli Clone

So my better half isn't a huge fan of beer, but we've discovered she enjoys fruit flavoured beers (Fruli, St. Ambrose ect..) I've also been meaning to start experimenting with 1 gallon batches of beer. This seemed like the perfect time to brew a small batch of fruit flavoured beer.

I spent a few hours scouring the internet for a Fruli recipe, but there isn't a lot out there, so I've bodged together one from a couple of sources. The base is going to be a scaled down version of Austin Homebrew's Belgian White Beer. and the strawberry flavour is going to be added with 2/3lbs of strawberry jam added in the secondary.

Austin Homebrews Belgian White Beer (modified for 1 gallon batch and available ingredients)

0.86 lbs Pilsner Malt
0.55 lbs Wheat Malt
0.45 lbs Flake Wheat
.1oz Cascade (leaf) (30min boil)
.1oz Cascade (leaf) (5 min boil)
.1oz Bitter Orange Peel (15 min boil)
.1oz Coriander Seed (15 min boil)
3944 Belgian Witbier yeast
Target OG 1.048
Target FG 1.010

To help scale this I found these tools helpful:

Mash & Sparge water calculation @ brew635.com
Beer Recipe Calculation @ brewersfriend.com

I'll be brewing tomorrow, so I'll post an update soon with pictures. 

English Style Ordinary Bitter Update

The beer was transferred to the secondary yesterday and the dry hops added.
We'll bottle or keg this coming weekend.

Here are some pictures from brew day:

Kent Golding Hops for the Boil (60min)

Dried Sugar Cane Juice

English Ale Yeast and Stir Plate

Irish Moss

Grain hanging out in the Mash Tun

The Kettle

English Style Ordinary Bitter

So we're back up and running with another brew day in New Westminster.
Matt, Kristi and I have decided to take a little more methodical approach to our brewing these days.
We've spent the last few months trying to learn as much as we can about the homebrewing process. To that end we've decided to try a couple of straight forward recipes and follow the instructions as close as we can to see how things turn out. As we get more comfortable with the process we'll start doing wild and crazy things again.

Today we brewed a 5 gallon batch of an English Ordinary Bitter based on the Humpty-Dumpty English Style Ordinary Bitter (see p 292 The complete joy of home brewing 3rd edition by Charlie Papazian).

6 lbs. Marris Otter
1/3 lb Crystal 30
1/4 lb. Honey Malt (original recipe calls for aromatic malt)
6 oz. Dried sugar cane juice (original recipe calls for rapidura)
1.6 oz. Fuggles (Boiling)
1 oz. Goldings (flavour)
1/2 oz Goldings (dry hop)
1/4 tsp. Irish Moss
White Labs British Ale Yeast WLP005
Target OG 1.038-1.040
Target FG 1.006-1.008

Brewing Notes:
-We heated 13L of water for sparging to 170F. We poached some of the water from here to raise the temperature during the mash process (133F to 149F to 158F to 167F)

-To complete the starch conversion we held the mash at 158F for 15min

-Our pre-boil volume was aprox. 5 gallons with an OG of 1.035

-Post boil volume was a little less than 4 gallons with an OG of 1.049

-Our final volume was 5 gallons with an OG of 1.039  and wort temperature of 70.6F

Picture and more info to follow....

Quick Update

Today we transferred the ESB into the carboy. We took a gravity reading an it came out at 1.012, so fairly close to the expected values. What was interesting to us, was the fact the ESB appears to be extremely clear right now. Our past experiences have shown that our beers need a week or so in the carboy to have all the yeast and other particulate settle out. We'll see how this one turns out as the week progresses.

Yesterday we moved the wheat beer into the carboy, and hopefully Matt and Kristy will get you the updates soon.

It's Brew Day in the Royal City

Here are some updates from today's brewing effort. Pictures to follow soon.

Bavarian Dunkelweizen

We used a total of 3.373 lbs of grain for this partial mash with 5L of water at 75C
The actual mash temperature was 68C and we let it soak for 30min. We sparged with 1.7L of boiling water.
The total wort boil was about 3.25 gallons with an OG of 1.050. So we're looking at an ABV of 5.5%
One thing to note, we discovered you should give your mash a really good stir before taking an OG measurement. There can be some wild swings in readings.

Wheat Ale Extract

Adding grains for the mash

Adding the mash to the boil

ESB

The amount of grain was just about exact to the recipie we published earlier. For this brew we mashed with 1.5L of water for 30 min (again starting at 75C but it dropped to 68C when the grain was added). It was sparged with 1.7L of boiling water.

The total wort boil was the same as the Dunkel and came out with an OG of 1.050, so again looking at an ABV of 5.5%

Warming up the kettle for the mash

The mash just prior to adding it to the boil

Style:ESB	Tasty Brew (Desired)	Tasty Brew (Predicted)	Hopville (Desired)	Hopville (Predicted)	Actuals
O.G	1.039-1.045	1.052	1.049-1.057	1.055	1.050
F.G.	1.009-1.014	1.013	1.012-1.015	1.014	1.012
IBU	20-45	53	>30	21.1	TBD
SRM	6-14	18	>6	18	TBD
ABV	3.7-4.8	5.0	>4.6	5.5	TBD

We've been using a lot of resources to help us learn and understand the brewing process a lot better. We found two online Beer Recipe calculators that help you compare how your recipe stands up to the style of beer you're brewing. It also gives you the ability to manipulate the ingredients, quantities and process so you can see how it will affect the outcome. We'll keep updating this through out the brewing process.

For me the most interesting thing to note is the IBU row. Tasty Brew and Hopville use different percentages for the Alpha Acid percentage in the hop varieties we used. So it'll be interesting to see how ours actually turns out.