Gyle 41 - Smashton's Classic Beer, a collab with Arlo

I've been a bit remiss about updating this blog, for that I'm somewhat apologetic. Only somewhat mind. This brewday took place on the 18th of August, and the premise was that my dear friend Arlo Sunny Attenborrow Greenway from Port Street Beer House would come round and we would brew a beer.

Gyle 40 - New World Black Guard Beer

I've not brewed for a while, other things have taken a leading role in my life (nothing important, I started reading Game of Thrones). I had a free day yesterday, so I decided that I had to brew. I've got quite a few ingredients, so it was imperative that I got a brew on. This was slightly chaotic, and most decisions were made on the fly. It was a bit of fun though. I did have a pump to test as well, so that was fun.

Homebrew Wednesday - PyotrSidwell's Cascadia

This is a beer that needs talking about, so I'm going to do just that. For those looking at the timestamp and saying it's not Wednesday, I say to you that I've not been to bed yet, so it's still Wednesday to me!

Homebrew Wednesday - KungFuRamone

This is only the second one of these, mainly as I don't seem to drink beers on a Wednesday. This is not the case today.

@KungFuRamone AKA Dave Harrison-Ward is a homebrewer from Macclesfield who has the rather ace blog Brews Implosion!! and recently he joined in on the bulk buying of hops that is enjoyed by some homebrewers in the Manchester area. He got some rather lovely Sorachi Ace whole hops, and he used the lot to make a Vienna Sorachi Saison.

Gyle 39 - Ventura pale

Today’s brew day started out as I had bought some aroma hop oil from The Malt Miller, and wanted to do a side by side comparison. So I devised to brew a batch, ferment it and then split it and dry hop one with hops, and the other with the aroma hop oil.

Gyle 38 - Sunny Garden Pale

I’m not generally arsed with low ABV beers, there’s so many shite sub 5% beers around, and I’ve had very little luck the 6 times I’ve tried to go below 5%. So I generally set the lower limit at 5%.  All that’s changed with all these lower ABV beers that have the body and taste of a higher ABV beer. A little hoppy gnome zombie if you will.

Gyle 37 - Experimental 366 IPA Mk 3

I’ve not brewed for a while, 2 months to be exact. The main reason is that I’ve been finishing off the final exams and dissertation for my BEng in Mechanical Engineering. That was finished as of yesterday, so this morning I got my brew kit out!

Gyle 36 - India Red Ale #InsultToHistory2

I took delivery of a new sack of Marris Otter from our dear friends at The Malt Miller and so thought "I've got a few hours whilst I'm writing this report up, I'm sure I can get a brew in, and maybe even get the hops right this time.

Gyle 35 - #InsultToHistory Black IPA

The decision to brew a black IPA was made after a bit of amusement on Twitter when a gentleman by the name of Roger Protz (editor of the good beer guide) made the comment of Black IPA - "it's an insult to the intelligence and to a historic beer style". This just made me want to brew one again (it has been over a year), so here's my go at a black IPA.

Homebrew Wednesday - PyotrSidwell

I've never blogged about other peoples beer before, usually as I don't think my palate is good enough to find all the various aromas and flavours that other people seem to be able to find with pinpoint accuracy in the beers they blog about.

But, I had the pleasure of being included in a Homebrew Wednesday beer blog post by the brilliant @broadfordbrewer a few weeks ago, so thought it only proper to pay the idea forward to @PyotrSidwell of unfocusedbrewing with this beer.

The ABC brewing challenge

A few days ago I was engaged in a conversation on twitter with the head brewer of Unfocused Brewing (@UnBrew), @PyotrSidwell. We were discussing homebrewing and the following idea sprang forward;

Agree a recipe outline,

Brew beers that meet that specification,
Compare/contrast the results.

Gyle 34 - Experimental Belgian Split Pale Ale

I wasn't planning on doing this today, but I had a pretty bad day. I came home from Uni after lectures and needed to do something to occupy my mind. Before I knew it, I had measured out grain and started heating up water.

Gyle 33 - Hoppy Belgian Brown IPA

This is totally different than anything I've brewed before, purely because of the way it was hopped, and also that I'm not dry hopping it.

Gyle 32 - CCS DIPA

It's 2014, and here's a big beer to start the year off in style. A big ass DIPA with Citra, Centennial, and the tasty as all hell, Simcoe! That's right, I'm Simcoe-ing mad.

Gyle 29 - UK grown Columbus US IPA

I was given some UK grown Columbus hops by @_aka_hige that were grown by by some of his friends, and so I thought I would make a nice US IPA body to try and showcase them.

Lack of brewing- the reason why...

OK, So I don't think I have a mountain of followers that are waiting for updates on my brewing exploits. But, there may be at least one person who looks at my brewing blog (Hi Dad!).

The reason I've not been brewing of late is that I've been building a whole new brew kit, from the ground up. I've not really documented it so much, but I will be posting details of everything I've done, once it's up and running (which should be pretty soon).

Once that's done, I will be brewing like a fiend.

#FiendBrewing

Double Brew Day - Double lesson learned day. On strike temperatures for mashing

This was meant to be a blog post on the double brewday that I did yesterday. I finally got round to re-brewing the Nelson Sauvin stout that I brewed in January for AG0010, and then whilst I was brewing that, I tasted a bottle of AG0020, the First Love, Fruit Salad IPA. It was bitter as all hell as I’d not scaled the amount of hops with the lower grist bill.

It was meant to be a discussion on all of that, but it’s not going to be. That may be later, today, this blog post is about a very important lesson I learned yesterday. Mash Strike Temperatures.

Gyle 21 - AG Winner Staison

As with most of my brews, I get an initial idea from somewhere, can be a conversation, can be something I've read. That will make me want to brew a particular style of beer. This is then matched to what ingredients I've got, and what makes it interesting to me.

Howto: How I do my brewing calculations, and my Brew Sheet.

Everyone has a different way to record what and how they brew, it's the only way you can both be consistent, and get better at what you do. Initially, I started out trying different brewing apps and software like the majority of people out there in homebrew land, but it left me feeling underwhelmed, and uniformed.

Then I saw a tweet by matthew clark ‏(@thornbridgematt) that said "Homebrewers! Ditch those brew calculators and learn to work it out by hand. http://tiny.tw/38L9 "

Gyle 20 - AG First Love Fruit Salad IPA

The premise for this started with a twitter discussion with @ColinStronge (Buxton Breweries Chief Copper Monkey) where he rather poetically said that he loved Simcoe like it was his first love. So I decided to do a brew with Simcoe in honour of first loves.