Big Beer Project

Steve SPF

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Got a call a few weeks ago from one of our local real ale pubs. They have a brewhouse on site that's been stood idle for a couple of years, it was pretty much time to brew some beer or stick the kit on ebay.

It's a serious step up for me but I've been around commercial brewing for a while now and don't find the scale particularly intimidating. There is a bit of pressure because the pub is very high profile so trying to get expectations in the right place was pointless, try as I might, and the beer had to be good right out of the gate.

The kit fought us a little bit but we got there and the beer came out quite well, I think a solid 6/10 with obvious room for improvement.

I'm paying the price this morning for brewing to 5.6% :)
 

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Looks great to me. Good luck!
 
Wish I could taste it! We tend to be harder on ourselves, but this drives constant improvement.

If I were confronted with such a task - I pray I will never be - I'd pick an easy pale ale or IPA and keep lots of careful notes.
 
A very simple grain bill and a single hop so nothing complicated. The plan from here is to keep the same grain bill and do a single hop series so a Chinook, a Cascade and then an Amarillo and see where we are from there. Nothing clever or complex at this stage.

The kit has its quirks so I have to learn all that stuff as we go but a good start I think. At least it wasn't a dumper :)
 
We had a minor flap over clarity - we still have a real demand for clarity in cask beer - but I found that dosing it with Brausol in the cellar got the job done and it presented really nicely.

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I'd guzzle a few pints of that Steve!

The craft beer channel just did a series on cask ale trying to keep the art of cask alive over there.
It seems in your neck of the woods it's still alive as ever?
Good luck with the next batch
What s the mash tun volume 1000lt?
I see old mate Harry uses a similar mash Tun
He mashes in with one of them electric paint mixers really stirs it up...
 
Cask is alive and well, volumes are shrinking but beer volumes are shrinking generally so the cask sector is doing fine. That pub that we brewed at usually has 8-10 cask beers on the bar.

I think the mash tun and kettle are 800lt (according to my rough measurements and Google), one of the many quirks of the kit is I don't have any means of measuring volumes of anything so OG is arrived at by a rough guess and then pre-boil gravity checks :)
 
Cask is alive and well, volumes are shrinking but beer volumes are shrinking generally so the cask sector is doing fine. That pub that we brewed at usually has 8-10 cask beers on the bar.

I think the mash tun and kettle are 800lt (according to my rough measurements and Google), one of the many quirks of the kit is I don't have any means of measuring volumes of anything so OG is arrived at by a rough guess and then pre-boil gravity checks :)
Wow flying blind for now just like dialing in a HB kit takes a few brews to find your grouve so to speak
How did you go anywhere close to what you estimated gravity wise?
 
Pretty ridiculous to be honest, I just looked at it and guessed the volume then sampled it a few times to get the pre-boil gravity where I wanted it to be. A bit old school I guess but I'm an old school guy these days so it all works out.

I feel it's exactly the same as dialling my own kit in yes, the only difference is scale.
 
Pretty ridiculous to be honest, I just looked at it and guessed the volume then sampled it a few times to get the pre-boil gravity where I wanted it to be. A bit old school I guess but I'm an old school guy these days so it all works out.

I feel it's exactly the same as dialling my own kit in yes, the only difference is scale.
What about your losses into the fermentor
Boil off?
Dead spaces I'd imagine there would be more losses on your scale in this area?
 
What about your losses into the fermentor
Boil off?
Dead spaces I'd imagine there would be more losses on your scale in this area?

Those bits are the real unknowns. I guessed at efficiency, assumed OG would be 3 points off the pre boil gravity and aimed to finish with 8 full casks which is exactly what happened.

There are no real concerns about yield out of the fermenter at this stage. That will change, inevitably, when the bean counters get involved. For now the conversation is around putting good beer on the bar.

In all honesty, the margins are really healthy even at this point but there won't be any keeping the bean counters in their box for long
 
Meant to say earlier about cask being alive and well.

Brewing cask is a great entry point for small brewers, they are in business straight out of the fermenter so that's where lots of them start over here.
 
Those bits are the real unknowns. I guessed at efficiency, assumed OG would be 3 points off the pre boil gravity and aimed to finish with 8 full casks which is exactly what happened.

There are no real concerns about yield out of the fermenter at this stage. That will change, inevitably, when the bean counters get involved. For now the conversation is around putting good beer on the bar.

In all honesty, the margins are really healthy even at this point but there won't be any keeping the bean counters in their box for long
You use the software here to conduct your brew session?
Glad to hear your having a crack at it commercially.
You've certainly got plenty of passion and know how now you get to apply it and hopefully reap the rewards.:)
 
You use the software here to conduct your brew session?
Glad to hear your having a crack at it commercially.
You've certainly got plenty of passion and know how now you get to apply it and hopefully reap the rewards.:)

The software here yes, couldn't see any reason not to.

I'm interested brewing commercially. I have a pal who has a mothballed brewery and the conversation there is for me to go and brew there when he commissions it, that one has around 60,000 litres of fermenting capacity and a terrifying steam boiler.

I think this project is a great learning curve for me on the way to that. Time will tell.
 
Attaboy Steve! You got balls my friend...i wish you were in the neighborhood so I could sample a pint or 3

Thanks man I'm not easily intimidated by these things to be honest but there was some naivety involved as well. In my mind it was a free hit to test the kit and see what happens.

That was the basis we agreed on but, of course, come brewday the expectations were very different and I was balls deep before I figured that out
 

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