Posts Tagged ‘brewday’
A Brewday with Matt at Truefitt Brewing
It was last June during our wedding anniversary week in Whitby that me and Emma paid Matt a visit in his new Brewery, less than a year later Matt was coming up to his 100th brewed Gyle and had plans for brewing that beer the day I was there. He was not working full time last year, but now having stopped working for The Lions Den and taken on his first employee, he is out on his own.
Best laid plans! The day before our brewday a fused spur had blown and Matt had to cancel a brew doe to lack of hot liquor, so our brewday was Gyle #99 though I suppose in spirit it was still #100, it was to be a big 7%+ IPA hopped with recently released Mandarina Bavaria Hops from Germany.
I was on holiday, it felt wrong getting up this early but I got to Truefitt for 7.30am and found Matt had just started mashing in:
Run-off starts from the Mash Tun via the converted Keg Underback:
He said he was attaching the hop filter!:
The Copper Stand, this is where the last or late hops get to steep in the hot wort giving them time for the hop oils and flavours to infuse into the wort:
He aerates the wort via a sprayball while transferring to the fermenting vessel:
Matt is currently contract brewing for the one for the last breweries he worked at so was going some back-fills for us at Saltaire:
The Beer was named ‘Trembler’ after a previous and differently hopped brew of the same strength, its 7.4% and a Double IPA… I’m hoping to get my hands on some of this in bottle so I can add some tasting notes to the blog.
I had a good day with Matt and his new apprentice Jack, I hope to see Matt down at Saltaire sometime.
The last thing to note is that a Sausage & Tomato butty in Middlesbrough is at least 40p cheaper than in Shipley!!
You also can catch Matt on:
@TruefittBeers
Facebook/TruefittBeers
Some of his regular beers are:
All Bottle-Conditioned, Matt has chosen to hand bottle his beers to keep the full flavour, I’ve also got some other bottles from Truefitt Brewing to try soon 
Click the Pics below to see what i thought of the beers 
AG#97 – Brown Ceas
Posted on: March 17, 2013
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Brown Ceas – This is my NCB / Saltaire Brewery brew for the bar, an American Style Brown Ale, loosely based on my previous ‘Steaming, Brown & Sticky‘ of last year, this is going to be a little lighter in colour as the other version was almost black, or at least a very dark brown.
‘Brown Ceas’ its like the 3-Cs Cascade, Columbus, Chinook and its brown! Bittering will hopefully be nice & spicy from the Aramis & Saaz, and I’ll have a Hop-freezer rummage for American Pellets and give it some dry in the fermenter.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 72%
Wheat Malt – 10%
Crystal Malt – 5%
Caramalt – 5%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 5%
Chocolate Malt, Pale – 2%
Chocolate Malt – 1%
Hops:
Aramis – 8.9 % @ 65 mins – 36g
Saaz – 3.95 % @ 35 mins – 40g
Columbus (Tomahawk) – 16.5 % @ 0 mins – 30g
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 30g
Chinook – 12.5 % @ 0 mins – 60g
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.045
Final Gravity: 1.012
Alcohol Content: 4.3% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 77 % (Its too late now, I punched in 77 rather than 75%!!!)
Bitterness: 45 EBU
Colour: 46 EBC
Mash: 68°c for 60-90mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
The Malts:
First Wort Aramis Hops:
Recirculating the Mash for Clarity:
The Hops all weighed out and ready:
85°c Steep Hops in for 30mins:
Top-Down view of the copper running off to FV, I got 1052 Gravity:
The spent hops in the copper, they soaked up a good couple of litres:
Bit of a late start but all done and dusted, liquored back just short of 3L from 1052 to 1045 getting a 21.92 Litre yield so only 1L short of target volume.
I almost forgot to add the Protafloc ‘cos I was messing about on Twitter too much, extended boil by 5 mins to account for lack of concentration!
I may dry hop this with Cascade Pellets, we shall see…
*24th Mar ’13 – Dry Hopped with 20g each of Cascade & Amarillo, so approx 2g/litre, Gravity at 1011. I also skimmed the yeast to use in my Robust Wheat Porter.
*Racked to Box 31st Mar ’13 with just 20g White sugar primings, Alkleer Finings also added as this is to be served from Handpull on the bar at work. Smells nicely dry hopped
AG#96 – Bravo+Apollo=Citra?
Posted on: March 2, 2013
Bravo+Apollo=Citra? – An experimental brewday with added Brew-Monkey! Its something I heard Stan Hieronymus say on a Brewery Network podcast (1H.27mins in) about the Bravo+Apollo=Citra so thought I’d give it a go, so ordered some Bravo to go with the Apollo I already had. If its any good I’ll maybe enter it into the Northern Craft Brewers & Saltaire Brewery Competition.
Thats experiment No.1, experiment No.2 was for SimpleOne on JBK (@Beehaveeor on Twitter) who wanted 5 beers marking for a hopping experiment he’s conducting, this second experiment also involved Dave @broadfordbrewer who came over to eat our food and drink our beer… and most welcome he was too.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 45%
Wheat Malt – 33%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 15%
Caramalt – 5%
Cara Munich III (Weyermann) – 2%
Hops:
Magnum – 12.7 % @ 60 mins – 25g (FWH)
Magnum – 12.7 % @ 30 mins – 25g
Bravo – 17.3 % @ 0 mins – 40g (80c Steep for 30mins)
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 0 mins – 40g (80c Steep for 30mins)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.055
Final Gravity: 1.013
Alcohol Content: 5.5% ABV
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 55 EBU
Colour: 17 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05 (I’d actually meant to skim off last weeks brew but totally forgot)
Mash: 60mins minimum, as we had beers to drink!
Liquor treated to Pale Ale via THBF calculator
The Malts:
Dave Mashing in:
The part of the brewday where we had to be diligent:
Running into the copper:
The 80c Steep hops:
The wort was certainly smelling very good, hope the yeast works its magic and makes it taste like Citra, in any case the Bravo hops were smelling good too, though the Apollo just smell like Dank Onions
Did a 2.5 Litre Liquorback to get OG 1055, so less than 1 Litre short on predicted brew length.
*8th Mar ’13 – Gravity at 1020 and tastes rather nice, its definitely not Citra but its certainly good beer Might Dry Hop with a few grams of Bravo & Apollo.
*Bottled 16th Mar ’13 – with 110g of white sugar to about 20 Litres, tasting good, pretty Peach / Mellon type Uber-Cascade-Amarillo thing going on.
AG#93 – Pacific Rim
Posted on: January 27, 2013
Pacific Rim – Light coloured beer stocks are low so I hope this to be a hoppy easy drinking beer, bittering from Simcoe and very kiwi Flame-out steep, I had a hop-freezer rummage and found a half pack of Riwaka… nice
The name ‘Pacific Rim’ is sort of an evolution from my Ring Of Fire which was all New Zealand grown hops, I didn’t realise until afterwards that there is a movie of the same name which looks pretty cool.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 62.6%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 24.4%
Caragold – 8%
Wheat Malt – 5%
Hops:
Simcoe 14.2 % @ 60 mins – 12g (FWH)
Simcoe 14.2 % @ 30 mins – 12g
Pacific Gem 17 % @ 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
Pacific Jade 15.1 % 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
NZ Cascade 8.5 % @ 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
Riwaka 5.9 % @ 0 mins – 25g (30min Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.040
Final Gravity: 1.010
Alcohol Content: 3.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 31.4 Litres
Mash Liquor: 9.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 30 EBU
Colour: 8 EBC
Mash: 67°c for 70mins
Yeast: Safale us-05
The Malts, 1kg of Weyermann Munich I & some CaraGold are my body & sweetness:
The hops:
First Wort Hops, I went with an open pack of Simcoe rather than opening up my first choice, a new pack of Magnum:
100g Flame-out Steep, all these hops were smelling amazing, the Pacific Jade are really sticky too:
Pre-liquorback gravity 1046, target is 1040:
No messing today, added some spacing pieces inside my Mesh Hop-Stopper so that it can’t lay too flat, compact & block, had lovely clear and timely run-off to FV.
Slight Schoolboy error was miss-reading the calculator and liquoring back an extra litre doh! Not the end of the world!
Tucked up in the fermentation fridge at 20°c, the yeast should make fairly short work of this.
*2nd Feb ’13 – This is tasting pleasantly light and drinkable, down at 1008 pretty sure its finished, happy so far
*Bottled 5th Feb ’13 with 100g White Sugar.
*12th Feb ’13 – this is very drinkable, subtle orange and berry with some light woody notes, a crisp bitterness and finish. I could easy drink a few of these
- In: Brewing
- 2 Comments
Non Terrestrial Intelligence – I’m using stuff up and have no Pale or Lager malt so I bought some Oat Husks from TheMaltMiller and added 5% to the recipe to aid sparging with so much Wheat Malt. I’m hoping for a fairly big hit of American hops with a good amount of bitterness.
The name comes from the Abyss movie.
Fermentables:
Wheat Malt – 76%
Carapils (Weyermann) – 8%
Special B – 8%
Oat Husks – 5%
Black Malt – 3%
Hops:
Simcoe – 14.2 % @ 60 mins – 25g (First Wort Hop)
Simcoe – 14.2 % @ 30 mins – 25g
Summit – 17.2 % @ 0 mins – 70g
Simcoe – 14.2 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Citra – 13 % @ 0 mins – 40g
Topaz – 16 % @ 0 mins – 10g (I just threw in a Sample I was given at work)
Nelson Sauvin – 12.1 % @ 0 mins – 11g (End of a bag)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.054
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 5.1% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 70 % – (Reduced from my regular 75%)
Bitterness: 62 EBU
Colour: 125 EBC
Yeast: Safale us-05
Mash: 66°c for 2 hours, I did an iodine test at about 90mins which had a tiny bit of starch left.
Malts in the bucket, I added some gypsum to the mash and Calcium Chloride & Mag Sulphate to the boil:
Adding the Mash Liquor to the Mash Tun, added a few degrees higher than my strike temperature and allowed to cool / Pre-heat the tun before mashing in:
I was originally going to use Magnum for bittering but decided to go with the open packs of hops instead so it was Simcoe all the way:
The Oat Husks in the mash:
20min Steep of the Flameout hops:
Initial Gravity reading was 1061, liquored back 2.5L to 1054:
The usual go-to yeast, its easy and clean fermenting:
A good brewday, the Oat Husks / Sparge worked really well and the wort was pretty clear for such a high percentage of Wheat Malt. The wort was smelling great too, put to bed in the fermentation fridge set to 20°c.
*7th Dec ’12 – Gravity at 1014 @about 22°c think its done but will give it another day before chilling it down. The Hydrometer sample tasted very nice too
*10th Dec ’12 – Down to 1013.5-ish, put on to chill down before bottling, still tasting good
*Bottled 16th Dec ’12 – with 100g White Sugar into about 20L of beer, still tastes good, would probably have been epic if I’d dry hopped
AG#88 – Casapollocade IPA
Posted on: September 30, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 4 Comments
Casapollocade IPA – As the name sort of says, this beer uses Cascade & Apollo hops in abundance for the late steep though bittering comes from two very healthy doses of Willamette
This beer is not shy and promises to be brash on the bitterness with floral, “dank” and piney notes, the Apollo are pretty pungent and might be better suited rolled in some Rizlas than soaked in wort!
Its been a little while since I brewed so I decided to make this a bit of a Pancake-day, used up all my Pale, Lager, Weyermann Munich Type I, and Oat malts… out with the old and in with the new etc etc….:)
Fermentables:
Pale Malt – 45.6%
Lager Malt – 18.1%
Oat Malt – 15.2%
Munich Type I (Weyermann) – 14.6%
Caramalt – 4.6%
Amber Malt – 1.8%
Hops:
Willamette – 6.4 % @ 60 mins – 75g – (First Wort Hop)
Willamette – 6.4 % @ 30 mins – 75g
Cascade – 7.9 % @ 0 mins – 100g – (20-30min Steep)
Apollo – 19.5 % @ 0 mins – 100g – (20-30min Steep)
Final Volume: 23 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.062
Final Gravity: 1.015
Alcohol Content: 6.2% ABV
Total Liquor: 32.9 Litres
Mash Liquor: 15.8 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 75 %
Bitterness: 84 EBU
Colour: 18 EBC
Mash: over 90mins @67c
Boil: 60mins
Yeast: Safale US-05
Liquor Treatment: GW Calc Dry Pale Ale
The Malts:
The Mash Temp, aimed for and hit my temp:
Liquor Salts & 75g of Willamette FWH:
Lots and lots of Hops:
First Sparge of the two batches:
Do you think 350g for a 23L brew-length is too much?:
Flameout Steep hops, 200g of them:
Chilled, nothing has settled out ‘cos there is a shed load of hops in there! Thinking logically this is a heck of a reason to use pellet hops for big heavily hopped beers as the retained wort would be much less:
All done, busy day; brewing, Exam revision, and tiling the kitchen…!
*7th Oct ’12 – Down to 1012 @ 22°c think its done, should I or shouldn’t I dry hop, wasn’t going to… Tastes to have a similar pungency to Green Bullet / Bobek in the mix. If I do dry hop I may use Magnum to test out an idea.
*Bottled 13th Oct ’12 – with 80g White Sugar
*22nd Oct ’12 – Taster bottle, this isn’t bad, bags of flavour it will hopefully dry out a little in bottle and become more of the IPA its meant to be, I never bothered dry hopping btw.
*1st Nov ’12 – I’m actually really enjoying this beer, bags of flavour, plenty of body and a tingle of bitterness without being too harsh.
AG#71 – Abyss Imperial Stout
Posted on: January 1, 2012
- In: Brewing
- 6 Comments
Abyss Imperial Stout – The big brew! New years Day 2012, a beer to brew-bottle-and-leave until New years Eve (or as long as you can wait! 6 months +) Brewing today was the idea of @Leedsbrew and a number of us Homebrew Forum and Twitter users are having an Imperial Stout Brew-a-long, the results should be interesting if we get to taste each others fully matured beers in a years time.
Fermentables:
Lager Malt – 69%
Munich Malt I (Weyermann) – 7.2%
Sugar, Date Molasses – 4.9%
Cara Aroma (Weyermann) – 4.5%
Roasted Wheat (Simpsons / Barley Bottom) – 4.5%
Sugar, Molasses (Blackstrap) – 3.8%
Roasted Rye Malt – 2.7%
Chocolate Wheat Malt – 1.8%
Carafa Special III – 1.8%
Hops:
Target – 10.2 % @ 60 mins – 83g
Bobek – 5.2 % @ 60 mins – 37g
Centennial – 11.5 % @ 60 mins – 10g
Challenger – 7.6 % @ 30 mins – 35g
Pacific Gem – 14.6 % @ 0 mins – 21g (20-30mins steep)
Hersbrucker – 3.0 % @ 0 mins – 20g (20-30mins steep)
Fuggle – 4.9 % @ 0 mins – 19g (20-30mins steep)
Stella – 15.6% @ 0 mins – 19g (20-30mins steep)
Final Volume: 20 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.096
Final Gravity: 1.022
Alcohol Content: 9.9% ABV
Total Liquor: 33.5 Litres
Mash Liquor: 21.2 Litres
Mash Efficiency: 65 % (reduced from a regular 75-80%)
Bitterness: 154 EBU
Colour: 625 EBC
The Malts, 8.455kg of them:
The Sugars, Date Syrup & Blackstrap Molasses:
The day so far:
The mash was on last night at 00:50 and the temp was 66°c, at 9am this morning it had dropped to 59°c.
I did 1 sparge at 80°c with an hour’s Mash-out and collected my pre-boil volume in the copper, as I had expected this was lower than the predicted pre-boil gravity (10 points too low).
I did a second sparge at 80°c with a 30min Mash-out of 12 Litres while boiling the first run-off hard, ran off about half the mash then boiled down some more before running off the rest of the mash. I also added the sugars at this point, and continued boiling down until I reached 1086/7 when the bittering hops went in which will hopefully put me in the 1096 area for the end of the boil.
7 Degree drop over about 8 hours:
Pretty full mash tun with the sparge liquor added:
Today’s hops:
The Molasses going in:
Flameout steep hops, I threw in a 19g sample pack of Stella too (very nice smelling hop):
Dirty Copper, break material forming as the wort cools:
173g Safale US-05 yeast skimmed from previous brew and kept in the fridge for a week at 4°c, I’ll pitch the lot at 18°c:
OG: 1095 Temp corrected (Brix 23.8 with Refractometer = 1096):
Running to FV:
Pretty much hit my predicted OG, yeast pitched (still smelling of Nelson Sauvin hops from AG#70, if it wasn’t that I’ve just ruined an entire brew!) **Update, the beer in my Glass is Ta Moko, it smells just like the yeast, beer is fine)**
Copper is being very slow to run off, must be the thick sticky wort.
Its almost time for a beer, a Chilled very-early taster of Ta Moko just to see how its doing
I think I’ll be buying some more Basra Date Syrup as it tastes very good and would lend its self very well to a Belgian Ale.
Other peoples NYD Imperial Stout brewdays: (I’ll add more as they are posted)
Spikesdad’s Imperial Stout
Barney’s Imperial Stout
Leedsbrew’s Titan Imperial Stout Parti-Gyle brewday
Lugsy’s Super Massive Black Hole Imperial Stout
Jimp2003′s Event Horizon RIS (Slightly Belated)
Tom Dobson’s Old Black Imperial Stout
*3rd Jan ’12 – Gravity is currently 1064-ish, Tastes good, some of the hopping coming through and some Fruity stuff which might be the Date Syrup.
*4th Jan ’12 – 1050
*Bottled 18th Jan ’12 – with 60g of White Sugar, filled 50-off 330ml bottles.
*29th Feb ’12 – Taster:
The Carbonation is just about right, a good hiss when popping the cap and a solid mouth tingle.
Beer Colour is dark as it gets, if i shine a very bright LED torch at one side of the glass I can only just see a very, very faint red shape thru the glass.
Smells a leathery, dry, with a touch of alcohol and coffee.
Tastes, full mouth oily coating body, a fair amount of alcohol which lasts as long as the mouth coating, some coffee & liquorice.
I am, again, glad that i used sugars in this beer
*2nd May ’12 – Just having a bottle of this, its rather good… maybe more like a Black IPA as the sugars have obviously helped to dry it out, very drinkable
*6th Jun ’12 – Taster time! This is rather bloody good, a full smooth and oily mouth feel, crisp tingly carbonation, its getting to the stage of being like Warm Boot leather and just as chewy
The Brew-History Review 2009-2011, Turned out nice again din’t it!
AG #68 – Trashy Black
My best Black IPA to date, a work-up of the Trashy Blonde recipe.
AG #66 – Centennial Blonde
Just an easy drinking tasty beer trying to emulate Mallinsons Centennial.
AG #64 – Mild Ale II
To brew again with a better yeast than Windsor, Windsor sucked Donkey wanger big time!
AG #63 – London Porterish II
This was a tweaked re-brew, brilliant fresh, tailed off for a few weeks then came back on form as the dark malts settle down and meld together.
AG #60 – Nelson Weizen
To brew again with better fermenter temperature control and a bigger yeast pitch, possibly a different Whitelabs strain.
AG #59 – Schwarz IPA
A bit of a mad experiment that might not be everyones cup of tea, German hops pretty much all the way, in my opinion it worked, a break from the American hops, Das Hopfen alles zusammen.
AG #56 – C.N.S Hops²
Bloody good beer, maybe brew it again with a bit less crystal / cara malts but I know this added to the juicy fruit of the hops.
AG #55 – Imperial Smoked Porter
Bag-ends and odds ‘n sods, tastes great, would add more smoke if done again, Drink fairly fresh while the smoke is still smouldering.
AG #54 – C.C.A.N
Bloody fantastic dry hopped loveliness, Chinook worked its magic.
AG #53 – Kölsch Wit
Totally marvellous Lager-a-like beer with Tettnang hops, a definite re-brew.
AG #52 – Half Wit
Nice beer, just needs the Coriander cutting in Half with some proper Whitelabs Wit yeast.
AG #51 – Double Oat Pale
The beer that made £65 for Charity at the NCB meet at Saltaire Brewery.
AG #46 – Phlegm
Nasty name but nice Belgian strong ale.
AG #45 – Trashy Blonde
A tweak on Sara Carter’s Trashy Blonde recipe, very good beer.
AG #44 – Liquorice & Treacle Stout
Dump or Double the Treacle, this beer have a lovely tight head, very tasty.
AG #41 – London Porterish
Re-brewed with tweaks to try and emulate the Fullers London Porter in ‘London Porterish II’.
AG #39 – Mild Ale
Very easy drinking Mild with fruity English hopping.
AG #38 – Stateside Torpedo IPA
A mad-for it brew that really hit the spot!
AG #37 – Nelson Brucker
Tasty beer but took a while for maturity to play its part.
AG #36 – Imperial Amarillo Wheat
Mad beer, about half a kilo of Amarillo went into it, Brewdog-esque while fresh.
AG #34 – ORBY v1.2
Strong Ales category winner at the 2010 NCB Comp in Skipton. Excellent beer if I do say so myself.
AG #29 – Naked Imperial Stout
I only have one bottle left (17th Dec 2011) its a beer worth waiting for 6-12 months to drink.
AG #26 – Northern Blue
Classy English bitter based on the Coniston Bluebird theme.
AG #25 – May Day
This beer while fresh had a lovely floral note from the Mittlefruh hops.
AG #17 – Over-run by Yanks
Re-brewed with tweaks for the 2010 NCB comp, very nice as it is.
AG #16 – Once Were Warriors
Nelson Sauvin hops, can it be wrong? Of course not…
AG #14 – Black Promise
Black malt, smoothness and very drinkable.
AG #10 – Yorkshire Trappist Red
My first Belgian, it hit the spot.
AG #7 – Munich Blauer Vogel
Úber Bluebird, yet again a Coniston Bluebird kinda-clone.
AG #6 – Otter Dark Stout mkII
My re-brew of an Extract Stout I made, a solid tasty stout.
AG #3 – Fuggles Bitter
I’ll brew this again or something like it, you need a bit of Fuggles in your life from time to time.
Extract #6 – T’old Blotchy Duck
An odd mix that worked, I’m sure an All-Grain recipe would do it justice.
Extract #5 – Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby
Classy, not like the real-deal but very nice for an out-of-book recipe.
Extract #2 – Bramling Cross IPA
This really did have smooth bitterness and Blackcurrant, confusing and brilliant!
Extract #1 – Hop Back Entire Stout
Oh just brew a Hop Back Entire Stout, you’ll love it… Though I’m sure being about 6% helps
Many thanks to the occasional drunken brew-monkey who helped out on a brewday
